


Zen and the Art of Just Sitting

by executrix



Category: Firefly, Homicide: Life on the Street
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-04
Updated: 2011-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-16 02:38:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Firefly crew has a job in Bawlmer. Tim meets another Buddhist. Jayne solves a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zen and the Art of Just Sitting

MAL: _Could've gotten off with Shepherd Book at the Bathgate Abbey. You could be meditating over the wonders of your rock garden right about now._  
JAYNE: _Better'n just sittin'._  
WASH: _It IS just sittin'_.

LT. CABLE: _And when your youth  
And joy invade my arms,  
And fill my heart as now they do,  
Then younger than springtime, am I,  
Gayer than laughter, am I,  
Angel and lover, heaven and earth,  
Am I with you._ ("Younger Than Springtime," from South Pacific)

JOANNE: _She's tall enough to be your mother.  
She's very weird.  
Goliath._ ("Poor Baby", from Company)

1  
"Okay, everybody," Mal said. "We got a job. And, Jayne, little's I've got a taste for the exercise of the common man's democratic franchise, I swear to God, that if you say one word, we are all—as one—gonna rip off your arm and beat you to death with the spiky end." He took a breath, fortified it with a sip of gone-cold milk tea with wheat germ, and said, "We're going to Bawlmer. To get crabs."

Mal waited long enough for some of the apoplectic redness to fade from the silent Wash's complexion, and continued. "'Nara, take it that'll suit with your plans, planet's gettin' all gentrified, from the Inner Spaceport an' all. Plenty of fellas with money in Bawlmer, should be work you can do."

"And to what do we owe this merry skip down the yella brick road to Damascus?" Zoe asked.

"Shepherd says we oughtta look for honest work, and, to give him credit, this time he put their pincers where his mouth is. Kaylee, Simon, the pair of you get to work on plumbing in some water tanks and coolant for a refrigerated storage unit. Unlike cattle, our new guests won't be wanderin' round the cargo bay."

"Water supply…" Zoe began dubiously.

"Got that covered. We're gonna make a stop at Purkiss, fill up the new tanks soon's we got 'em to fill. The bid tender includes the water and the fuel for the detour."

"I'm sure that Kaylee is more than equal to the task," Simon said (Kaylee tried to figure out if this was an insult or not) "But I'm not sure I can contribute much…"

"Hey, you can weld and rivet," Mal said, his voice expressing how lucky he thought Simon was to have acquired valuable vocational skills. "Y'can now, anyhows. And blood in veins and, uh, those other things, refrigerant in copper piping…pretty much the same thing."

Mal winked at Kaylee, reassuring her that the job would give her plenty of time in small confined spaces with Simon.

Inara shook her head. {{Chieftain of the Clan O'Blivion}} she thought.

"Milk run," said a conciliatory Jayne. "We'll take to it like a fish to Walther."

" **What**?" Wash said, representatively.

"Y'know," Jayne said. "Shootin' 'em in a barrel."

2  
The great thing about being a detective, Bayliss thought, was that you were allowed to concentrate on just one thing. Now, when he was at the apex, a veteran in the Homicide squad, if he observed irregularities of a non-fatal kind, he might pass along a word to Narcotics or Vice or Safe & Loft. Then again, he might not, especially when a snitch or a wit was in full spate. Back when he was in the blue bag, if anything happened on his turf, he would be responsible for at least trying to do something, however futile.

Therefore, when Captain Malcolm Reynolds and the SS Must Be Up to Something turned up in Bawlmer, and its crew developed a predilection for not only drinking at the Waterfront but accompanying the booze with Munch's most noxious blue-plate specials, Bayliss didn't find it necessary to investigate. There was no reason to associate the newcomers with any of the latest names in red on the board—many of them long-time Bawlmoron hoodlums with plenty of well-aged beefs with the indigenous population.

3  
"I'm Tim Bayliss. Part-owner of this joint."

"Simon," Simon said loudly, "Thatcher," more quietly. He was twelve chapters into a history of England-that-Was.

Tim loomed over the table, looking handsome and extremely tall. Possibly even taller than Jayne. Simon estimated the disparity in their heights as about eight inches, and envisioned a massive, porn-worthy phallus, vined with corded veins, sprouting from the top of his own head to bridge the gap. {{That's one kind of unicorn that would guarantee a supply of virgins' laps}} he thought, and blushed a little.

Tim felt a pang of memory. The beautiful young man behind the glass of house red and the Halibut Couscous didn't look like Chris Rawls, not really. He was a lot younger, for one thing. But they were both short and had dark eyebrows and Black Irish coloring that Tim thought might be his type, after he'd done enough of this guy-guy stuff to **have** a type.

(Chris had cut Tim off after three dates, explaining, "Tim, I'm a gay man. **You** are a factory second from the Lesbian Factory. The way to make yourself miserable is to try to force things to be what they're not, just because you want something. Grab and pull down too hard, and you both drown. Come back to the restaurant when you have a boyfriend, and I'll send you over some of our really spectacular home made limoncello to wish you all the best. He'll be a lucky man, but what he won't be, is me.")

It was a pretty slow night, and River was having a good time playing Risk with Lewis and Falsone, so Simon just had to cast an eye over in her direction occasionally to see the situation hadn't soured, and Tim could sit down at Simon's table, sometimes for five or ten minutes at a time. Simon was a little drunk and afraid of saying the wrong thing, so mostly he gazed up at Tim and encouraged him to talk about himself, which was his best guess about what other people considered charming.

Then it got to be two in the morning, and Tim had to close up so Simon found himself putting glasses in the dishwasher as Tim cashed out and did the deposit slip for the night deposit. Simon put some money in the jukebox and then Tim hit it at the spot at the back and played a couple of slow songs. Simon picked up another tray of glasses, and Tim grabbed the front end of the tray and leaned forward.

"Uh." Tim said, to a full stop. "Simon, you've…well, you've been physically intimate with men, haven't you?"

Simon was going to say, "No shit, Sherlock," but Tim sounded deathly and taxly serious, and Tim's innocence and goodness tasted as piercingly sweet to Simon as the inside of a chocolate-covered cherry. So all Simon did was nod and wait to see what Tim would say next.

"God," Tim said. "'Born too soon and started too late.' Well. There were…complications. There are different complications. Simon, do you want to see me tomorrow…later today? Not here, of course. Someplace private. "

Simon wanted to lean over and kiss him but didn't think he could reach far enough without dropping a whole rack of glasses on their feet.

4  
Simon, buoyed up by the knowledge of his date that evening, kissed Kaylee on the cheek. "How'd it go?"

"You'd be surprised how much there is to the care and feeding of crabs," Kaylee said. "Well, crustaceans in general. Crawdads, f'rexample. Wash took notes."

"Uhh, where's River?"

"With Sheppard," Kaylee said. "Out shoppin'. I think they're goin' to this place that sells stuff for long hair, 'cause, y'know, they both got it, and they might get some stuff for Zoe too. And, y'know, girl talk. I think River's glad to meet a new person."

" _Shen me_?"

"Oh, you know, Rene. She's one of the detectives. **Our** Shepherd found out the bossman in the Homicide squad used to work with him, Army days" (Simon briefly wondered which side but wanted to stick with the matter at hand) "so he waved me up that he went for a visit and River wanted to come along. She and Rene took to each other real good. When they get back, Book says he's gonna take her over to the shootin' range—seems like she told him she used to target-shoot…"

Simon nodded. "Yeah, she was the Osiris Western Region Under-15s champion in sporting clays. They recruited her for the Olympic biathlon team, but her ballet teacher told her not to ski in case she, you know, racked up her ACL."

"You can see, she's in 'bout the safest place in the whole planet, so don't fret."

."Kaylee, have you—has this entire crew—gone nuts? She's hanging out in a **police station** …."

"Aww, Simon, nothin' to get arbitrary over. We ain't doin' nothin' wrong. We're gonna get a ship fulla things that look like big bugs, some of 'em alive and some froze, and take 'em from one place where they ain't against the law to someplace else where they ain't either."

Simon wanted to explain that, unlike the rest of the crew, he and River weren't in trouble when they did anything, they just **were** , but he didn't know how to say it. "Just give me the address," Simon said, striding out quickly enough to speed up his breathing. As if walking into a police station wouldn't induce hyperventilation anyway. He thought that the firing range was likely to be in the basement, and it was (he had to pass the morgue, and he never thought that the smell would make him nostalgic).

He found River and Tim, grinning, cute in their padded earphones, comparing well-ventilated targets. It looked like they had been cutting paper snowflakes. Simon's head began to spin—he owned a veritable matryoshka of ever-more-encompassing knowledge of what going mad feels like—until he saw the badge clipped to Tim's waist. {{Well, if that doesn't put the cherry on top}} He wondered if River knew about Tim's day job while he and Simon were flirting at the Waterfront. He decided that of course she did. One of Simon's disputes with the Alliance was that he really, really disliked its effect on River's sense of humor, which had been pretty brutal even before she went to the Academy.

"Oh, hi," Tim said, pushing back the earphones, ruffling his hair. Simon almost choked. "Rhiannon's been telling me about how she's a shooter from way back." Simon nodded, figuring he'd get into the least trouble that way. {{Maybe if I can go seven years without talking, my sister will no longer be an enchanted swan.}} Tim gave Simon a one-armed hug, kissed him on the forehead, and said, "That's what I did before Homicide, you know. I was on the mayor's Protection squad, as a sharpshooter."

"I didn't know," Simon said politely, as if a snorting aunt had pawed the ground, charged, and given him a box of socks for Chrysanthemum Festival.

"See you tonight," Tim said. "I've got something very special planned! Got the address?"

Simon nodded, wondering if this was the kind of planet where being kissed by a cop was a capital offense. "Come on, Ri…Rhiannon, time to go back to the…go back," he said.

He did give serious consideration to the idea of not turning up. For all the good that did.

5  
"My, that certainly is an…altar," Simon said, as Tim's eyes sparkled with excitement. Simon left his shoes near the door. "And that's a beautiful gardenia." (Simon wondered if the test tube it was stuck in came from the morgue.) The Buddha was bakelite, which was probably a splurge. The zabuton was ice-blue artificial silk, the zafus that rested on it were valentine-red velveteen. Tim reverently lit the incense and put a disk of much woodwind whooshing and woodblock banging. He motioned Simon to the guest zafu, sat down on his own cushion, and composed his spirit to meditation. As he had been taught, he tried to block out the ambient sounds, and concentrate only on his breath and his koan, but he couldn't, with the fidgeting and suppressed sighs going on just a few feet away.

Tim opened his eyes and swiveled around to face Simon. "Your sister says that when you were young, you used to spend **hours** in the temple in your grandmother's compound."

"We all did," Simon said. "The old bat used to change her will approximately every Tuesday, based in part on the comparative piety stats. Uh, Tim, the precious heritage of thousands of years of Christian mysticism…I bet your family really went a ton on that, hmmm?"

Tim shrugged. "Well, my mom goes Christmas and Easter, my dad, not even that much when he was still alive. Okay, okay, point taken. But I want to finish sitting for tonight," he said repressively. "Come on up here with me if you can't sit still."

Simon was going to remonstrate that at this rate Tim was never going to get any more depraved then he was now, because he wasn't going to get anybody to debauch him, but something stopped him. He sat in Tim's lap, and Tim put an arm around his waist and dropped his chin down on Simon's shoulder. Simon closed his eyes and breathed in concert with the ribs expanding and contracting against his back, the current past his ear. It was a cross-cultural mixed metaphor, but oh, he felt himself sailing on a flying carpet. So high over the minarets, so safe and warm {{although presumably the air currents would be cold, and of course it would depend on whether the carpet was in atmosphere…}}

The music came to an end, with a final gong, and Tim folded his other arm around Simon's waist and kissed the back of his neck.

Simon was going to say "Bed! Now!" imperiously but the compromises of his recent life made him scale it down to a diffident "Flat surface?" and Tim nodded and stumbled toward the light switch in the bedroom.

Simon followed him, knelt over Tim and slid upwards, knowing that a clear choice between kissing and frottage had to be made, and repeated on a moment-to-moment basis. The thin gray sweater Tim wore was cashmere and the thick gray sweatpants were cotton.

They tried to kiss slowly but it wasn't working, and Simon reached a hand down between Tim's legs. {{Jesus, Jesus, I'm dyin' here}} Simon thought. Tim groaned and one hand dinner-plate-sized hand grasped Simon's shoulder and the other grabbed his ass. If Simon just pulled open the drawstring and shucked off the sweater, then Tim would be stripped except for the sweat socks. Simon thought he wouldn't mind if **those** stayed in place, forgotten; the puffy clouds supporting a Baroque cherub.

Simon dragged his mouth away from Tim's, and half-rolled behind him and slipped a hand beneath the hem of Tim's sweater, with cashmere against the back of his hand and hot skin under his palm. Tim's after-shave was patchouli but Simon quickly forgave him that. Simon wrapped his leg around Tim's, and pulled him toward him tighter, closer.

"Uh…don't," Tim said. "I'm not, uhh, ready for that. You know."

"I won't," Simon said. "I'm just kissing." He gave Tim's ass a comforting pat, and left his hand there a little while longer. "C'mon, let's get that sweater off."

"Look who's talking!" Tim said. Simon knelt up on the bed, pulling at the knot of his tie and shedding his jacket. He had one cuff link off when Tim half-sat up and attacked Simon's shirt buttons, flinching when he landed on the cuff link, "Sorry," Simon said, and put both of the cuff links in his trouser pocket. There was a bedside lamp, so he switched it on and asked Tim where the switch was to kill the overhead light. He tentatively ordered Tim to get under the duvet, figuring he'd be more comfortable that way. Simon took off his trousers en route from the light switch, which gave Tim a head start in fishing out the whole string of a dozen condoms that he had under the pillow.

"You planned further ahead than I did," Simon said, showing him the four condoms he'd palmed from his trouser pocket. He put them on the nightstand, along with the others. Simon climbed into bed and pulled the duvet over them, turning them into a single magnetic spider. Tim's hands patted frantically, creating a topographic map of Simon.

Tim had used the opportunity to get rid of his clothes (for a tenth of a second, Simon regretted not saying something about the sweat socks). Simon was a little surprised that Tim's chest was as smooth as his own; he'd expected a lion-tan tangle right in the middle.

Simon reached back toward the nightstand for a condom. "I'd like to go down on you. Is that OK?"

"Christ, yes," Tim said, estimating where Simon was going to end up so he could slide a hand inside the black silk underwear that set off Simon's skin like the bow tie on a tuxedo shirt.

6  
The next night, it was Meldrick's turn behind the stick. The husky bearded man commandeered a couple of pitchers and a bottle of Jack and sat at the back booth. The strange-looking thin girl, who kept invading Beylix with dinosaurs when they played Risk, sat at the bar. "The Round Table was destroyed and its ideals betrayed, because of one evil action," she said. She reached into an antique beaded purse on a long gold chain for a couple of neatly folded notes. "Gimme a Zombie with a double umbrella." Meldrick thought about carding her, but she rolled her eyes. "The ABC just broke your balls for show, they won't do it any more."

Meldrick wasn't disturbed by that--his Aunt Graziela had The Sight--so he shrugged and mixed her the drink. She punched up the jukebox and, drink in hand, began to dance, alone in the center of the floor.

Meldrick went back to mopping the bar and worrying. He was just as glad he hadn't told Kellerman the truth--that no one actually cared if he took or not, they weren't them Jesuits who messed up Pembleton's head, all they cared about was whether he was good murder police. And Kellerman was--well, he was okay murder police, although, as the girl said mid-spin, "He's no Crosetti."

And now Mikey was sick in his soul, that pretty smile that made Meldrick so happy had been sucked away somewhere, like the smoke into a pipe fiend's lungs. Mike had an abscessed Mahoney like Meldrick once had an abscessed tooth, and he wasn't going to get better until someone went in there and drained it...

The girl shot a glance in the backbar mirror at the guy she came in with, who was now regaling Crystal and Her Roving Band of Cop Groupies with tales of broken scopes. "The bear came here to hunt," she said, conversationally.

7  
Tim's beeper went off, and he grimaced until he saw that the wave was from Simon. "Hi," he said. "Look, I'm almost off-shift and it's my night off from the bar. Want to go out?"

"All right," Simon said warily. Spending any time whatever with Tim made him realize how much he couldn't afford to notice how much he had missed the company of good people. He had half-hoped that Tim wouldn't answer, and he could just leave a message of noncommittal longing.

The 2300 Club was dark, smoky, and so noisy that mostly instead of talking, they sat at a minuscule round table (getting Tim's knees underneath reminded him of the clown car in the circus) and held hands. Simon, reflexively, memorized a route to the back exit in case of a raid.

Tim's happiness was complete when he saw Chris across the room with a handsome (and very tall) black guy, and he was able to wave and give a triumphant smirk. After a couple of litchi martinis and boilermakers, they got up to dance. Just as Simon reflected that he and Tim were the reason why white people don't get invited to parties, his personal communicator rattled against his hip. "I have to take this," he whispered, and found the pasukom booth.

"Simon, what the diyu are you doin'? I need you back here. We're leavin' soon's we can," Mal said.

"Look, for once there was no crisis and I wanted a little time for myself, all right?"

"Just quit whinin' and get back here. And if you see Jayne on the way back in, tell him to do the same."

Simon found Tim in the press of the crowd, whispered, "I have to go. I'll be back if I can, and I probably can't. Thank you." He curled his hand loosely around Tim's, brought Tim's hand up to his face, then kissed Tim's knuckles, let the hand drop, and left.

The regulars at The 23 had seen middle-of-dancefloor bad breakups before, and there was no shortage of would-be consolers for the really cute big guy, but after a few minutes of standing stock-still, Tim just got his leather jacket from the checkroom and went home.

8  
Kellerman walked into the squadroom, hung his jacket on the back of his chair, and craned his neck at the red letters being added to Bayliss' caseload.

"Didja hear?" Lewis asked. "Luther Mahoney got whacked."

"No shit," said Kellerman.


End file.
